It’s not that we’re scared of the Tunaki, nor that we are obsessed with Cthulhu and the Octocat will do as a fine substitute. We are retiring our self-hosted Gitlab due to a few major differences in the two source code hosting facilities. Let’s outline them below, then we’ll discuss how this may effect you. ( especially if you haven’t really been paying attention 😛 )

The benefits of moving to GitHub from our own self-hosted GitLab (so lovingly nicknamed QuickLab) were far outweighing the cons, I personally had to take a moment to list a few pros and cons of the solutions and the list turned out to be a waste of time! Why you ask, it’s simple, here’s why we’re moving to GitHub (and have already moved FYI)

WHY?

Aside from GitHub having partial svn support, for those that need such a thing. GitHub has a far superior user base, counting some 15 million users as of August of 2016! This is a huge bonus as the platform is already popular among many users, ranging from your everyday user looking to do things themselves and/or learn; all the way to high-end developers of some of the worlds most popular software and deployment solutions. The reason here is obvious. By hosting our source code via GitHub, we have the ability to put ourselves in a more friendly and easy to attain solution for those willing to either get their hands on QuickBox, or even help to develop on top.

The next big factor is GitLab is a self-hosted solution. This is fine as in the entire course of our GitLab server being online, there has not been more than 5 minutes of downtime… which was intentional on our part to rebuild some of it’s deliverable to be more suitable to us. This however adds to the already large volume of workload that I or anyone of the QuickBox volunteer staff already have. Therefore, it makes sense to simply host at GitHub.

What does this mean for existing installs?

The only thing that changes is that you will need to manually remove your old~/QuickBox stored repositories on your server.

Let’s update now if you haven’t!

[1] login to your server via ssh. Gain root access withsudo su followed up withcd to access your /root directory. Once in your /root directory, type the following to remove your current local QuickBox respositories.

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rm-rf~/QuickBox

If you are already located on the GitHub repo as of v2.4.9, run the following to easily update to the new v2.5.0QuickBox/QB repo:

[4] run the upgrade script to match any recent changes and to get you on your way:

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box upgrade

[5] now update your bash:

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source/root/.bashrc

[6] ENJOY!

What does this mean for those hosting code on your ‘QuickLab’?

It means you’ll need to import your code over to GitHub or any source code hosting solution of your choosing. We will be powering down the GitLab server by the end of this week, mark your calendars for February 17, 2017, as all repositories will be offline and will not be able to be recovered.

It’s been a fun ride with GitLab, but with the expansion and ever growing member-base of QuickBox, it was simply an financial and mental expense that makes wise-sense to move away from as we continue onward!